Water parks – The imaginatively-spelled Jumeirah Sceirah at Wild Wadi, one of four water parks in Dubai -- scary not just because of slide's near-vertical drop but the 600 gallons of water a minute it uses.

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Dubai Miracle Garden boasts around 45 million flowers in bloom

"Dirty" methods used to keep emirate golf greens immaculate

A ski resort -- in Dubai? With penguins?

And can a desert run be called fun?

(CNN)Endless dunes, scrubby vegetation, camels.

Dubai seems to have contemplated the kinds of things you'd expect to find in a desert and responded: irrigate!

And so it has, planting not only botanical gardens but record-breaking botanical gardens, ski slopes complete with penguins (no, not a mirage) and dozens of greens, fairways and golfing water hazards.

The secret?

Well, desalinated water provides some of the countless gallons of water needed to realize these dreams but another source is somewhat dirtier.

45 million flowers

It takes a lot of water to maintain any kind of garden in the desert -- but imagine trying to keep 45 million flowers in bloom.

That's the task for the team behind Dubai Miracle Garden, a seven-hectare attraction that opened in February in the sands just outside the city limits.

Visitors are confronted with a riot of colorful -- some would say gaudy -- patterned flower beds, creative vertical displays and manicured lawns.

With precipitation such a rarity in Dubai -- it falls on fewer than 25 days a year, on average -- the plants are kept hydrated using waste water and a drip irrigation system.

A butterfly garden is next on the cards here and, this being Dubai, there are already world records to boast of -- the longest (800 meters) wall of flowers, the world's biggest flower clock and the tallest flower pyramid.

Given that most advice for getting about in the desert around Dubai is to travel inside an air-conditioned 4x4 and not over-exert yourself for fear of heat stroke, the sight of a gaggle of runners pounding the outback highways is a strange one.

Temperatures often exceeding 40C do not, however, deter participants in the Dubai Desert Road Run, a 10-kilometer race following empty asphalt roads through the dunes.

Races are held around six times a year, including in August, when the race kicks off at 6 a.m. to avoid the worst of the summer heat.

In times gone by, when Bedouin trekked across the Arabian desert in search of water sources, the thought of people floating down a nearby river on rubber rings, or riding an artificial wave on a boogie board, would have been considered the stuff of mirages.

But now there are not one but four big water parks in the UAE -- Wild Wadi (+971 4 348 4444) and Aquaventure (+971 4 426 0000) in Dubai, Dreamland in Umm Al Quwain (+971 6 768 1888), and Yas Waterworld in Abu Dhabi (+971 2 414 2000).

Each pumps millions of liters of desalinated seawater through dozens of rides each day for the entertainment of aqua-loving thrillseekers.

At Wild Wadi, 600 gallons of water a minute surge through the white-knuckle Jumeirah Sceirah to propel riders down its steep slide at more than 80kph.